I bought this phone yesterday and because of that, I'm not used to the phone and telecom account as I've been using vodafone.

I tried to text people with this phone and I've found out there's this 160 character limit. I assume it's the number of characters I can send with 1 text message and if I have more than 160 characters, I'll have to pay for 2 text messages.

Once, I've reached the limit and tried to type something more even I get to pay for more texts and then I've found out that I can't type in anything more.

Is there any way out of this? I'm wondering if it's because I'm not used to the phone yet or the phone was set to be like this. Though if it is supposed to be like this, that's reeeaally bad..

On GSM handsets, there is usually a setting which enables 'long messages'. This feature allows you to concatenate messages if you go belong the length limit, as you describe.

Unfortunately, I have never been able to find a similar feature on any CDMA phones. I'm not sure if it's technically possible to send messages longer than 160 characters on a CDMA network but I agree that 160 characters is often not enough and it would frustrate me if I were a regular user of text messaging.

I wonder what happens if you send a long message from an 021 handset to an 027 handset?

Nope. SMS is limited to 160 characters in any network, be it CDMA or GSM. Some mobile phones have special features that allow you to enter more than the limit - and the message will be sent in multiple SMS, and of course you'll be charged for each one in multiples of 160.

It means that if you send 161 characters from some of these phones then you'll be charged for 2 x SMS. Great money making isn't it?

You cannot send long messages from any telecom cdma phone. If you get a long sms from voda it will not display properley on telecom phones. Even if you send a long sms from voda it will still cost you for two sms. so you may as well send two from telecom

Both my brother and sister use Telecom 027 (got the handsets for free), and they recieve full length (160 character) sms from me.

I perfer to use proper English rather than 'txt sp3ak' so the message tends to get full quite quick. Which is why I resort to MMS with the people I know who have MMS (Vodafone, that is) handsets. MMS's don't have the same limits to a degree (100kb of space :) ).